Status: 03/13/2023 00:01
While the global arms trade is declining slightly, European countries are importing more and more arms. According to a report by the Stockholm peace research institute SIPRI, the trigger was the Russian war of aggression once morest Ukraine.
Arms imports from European countries have risen sharply over the past four years. According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the background is the Russian war of aggression once morest Ukraine. Between 2018 and 2022, the countries bought almost twice as many weapons as in the previous five years, the peace researchers said when the report on the global arms trade was published in Stockholm.
“After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European countries want to import more and faster weapons,” said SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman. The European NATO partners even increased their arms imports by 65 percent in the period under review compared to the previous five years. Overall, however, the global arms trade has declined by around five percent, it said.
USA is still the most important arms exporter
According to the annual report, as in previous years, the USA was the most important exporter of weapons with a share of 40 percent. With a share of 16 percent, Russia was in second place, followed by France with eleven percent and China with 5.2 percent.
With a share of 4.2 percent between 2018 and 2022, Germany was the fifth largest supplier of weapons. However, German exports fell by 35 percent compared to the five years before.
Russian arms exports fell by 31 percent
The USA and Russia have led the list of the world’s most important arms exporters for years. In the period examined by the peace researchers, however, the gap between the two countries has increased. US exports increased by 14 percent between 2018 and 2022 compared to the previous five years, it said. Exports from Russia, on the other hand, fell by 31 percent.
Despite the decline, Russia is increasingly delivering to China and Egypt, the peace researchers said. There are also buyers in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Angola, Nigeria and Mali. However, the peace researchers assume that Russian exports will continue to shrink because available weapons are needed for their own troops. In addition, potential buyers are under pressure from the US and Europeans, who have imposed sanctions on Russia.
Eleven percent of global arms sales went to India
As a country, India recorded the most imports in the world between 2018 and 2022, according to the report. Eleven percent of global arms sales went to the South Asian country. Saudi Arabia (9.6 percent), Qatar (6.4 percent), Australia (4.7 percent) and China (4.6 percent) were also among the largest importing nations.
According to the report, Ukraine was the third largest importer of arms in the world in 2022. Ukraine’s importance in the international arms trade has increased sharply since the start of the Russian attack on February 24, 2022 – although the NATO countries, fearing a further escalation of the conflict with Russia, have not delivered any fighter jets or long-range missiles to Ukraine , as Wezeman pointed out. At the same time, the SIPRI researcher criticized the export of comparable weapon systems to other crisis regions.
